When we look up, we see the clouds and its changing forms. Signs of a shinny day or of strong storms. Above them, the infinite. As its moves are aleatory, simultaneous or juxtaposed, with drawings and shapes changing with the winds, the indetermination is one of the principles that rule the city’s materialization. As the clouds, the urban is also a devenir, a “becoming”.

Today, in addition to the issues involving spatiality, the urban problem is a public, collective, democratic, multi-disciplinary and a large-scale challenge.

What will then be the urban mentalities of the future?

Thinking of that, our strategy for the implementation of the New Bouwkunde is not based on establishing it as an iconic and perennial building, but to create a system that is capable of being progressively developed in the form of an extraordinary infrastructure that organizes the coexistence of different elements, and that shelters the unpredictability and the impermanence of life. Our propose is not to sum them to shape the whole, but to transcend them.

We materialized this concept by means of an extensible structure in the shape of a grate, which we denominated Reticulated Motherboard, raised high from the ground and that is technologically super-skilled, where any point can connect to another, both virtually and physically by Experience Blocks: migrant bodies that float without geological or urban bonds, “de-territorialized”, autonomous and distributed in a free and dynamic configuration, building an amplitude in which the quality of the full and empty spaces, the cover and the nature will constitute a place of the co-presence, co-participation, and co-existence.

The only telluric link of this system is through the Grand Nucleus: a core that is the structure of support to the grate, contains part of the set of vertical circulations and the infrastructure of facilities, and also a huge hydraulic lift that will promote spatial transformations due to its size, will integrate the programme spatially and functionally, and will be, above all, a great surface of social integration.

With the imagination and participation of students and teachers, the spaces will be changed, densified, dissolved, recombined, renewed or suppressed to give rise to forms that will meet the needs across the time, making them co-authors before an ‘open work’ of such kind.

Resonant and spreading out everywhere across the Campus, the New Bouwkunde will turn into an immense laboratory, in an experimental site, the platform of supreme research, where interchange and interdisciplinarity between urbanists, architects, artists, and all the other sciences will be critical for the beginning of a new urbanism.

REPORT OF THE JURY MEETING OPEN INTERNATIONAL IDEAS COMPETITION BUILDING FOR BOUWKUNDE

On the first morning of the two-day jury meeting, the jury members are given time to individually view all 466 competition entries, as exhibited in the hall of the University Museum.

THE SECOND (PENULTIMATE) ROUND

The penultimate stage of the jury process begins with an individual round. Each jury member spends hours closely studying the 50 projects selected for the second (penultimate) round. The panels of these entries are now presented collectively in the University Museum’s main hall. The jury members agree that the 50 nominated entries are extremely worthwhile, while also adding their regret that all these entries cannot be more extensively discussed in the final jury report. The 50 entries present a wide spectrum of possible approaches and challenging architectural proposals. When looking at the selected entries, a number of recurring themes emerge. While acknowledging that many cross connections between the various themes exist in many proposals, the jury report of the second (penultimate) round is structured along these themes:

- Sustainable and technological innovations
- Dynamic landscapes of education
- Generators of social interaction
- Out of site: the faculty as a mobile community
- Visions on future educational concepts

OUT OF SITE: THE FACULTY AS A MOBILE COMMUNITY

The focus on mobility is a remarkable theme among the entries. In the near future, architectural education might be less place-bound, owing to new communication techniques and the possibility of travelling fast. A number of entries take this situation as their points of departure, presenting a mobile faculty of architecture.

FROM RIVER ROTTE TO THE OCEAN

This proposal takes a radical stance, recalling the superstructures of Superstudio and Constant. The focus on infrastructure is an interesting theme, aiming to spread Bouwkunde’s activity across the campus, while retaining one central core.